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An anonymous reader writes "Twelve years ago Bill Gates had to deal with lawyers questioning him in regards to the Microsoft antitrust case. Now it might be that other tech mogul's turn. Steve Jobs has been ordered to answer questions regarding Apple's iTunes music monopoly. From the article: 'US Magistrate Judge Howard Lloyd, based in San Jose, California, ruled on Monday that lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit may question Jobs for a total of two hours. Apple may appeal the decision. A company spokeswoman declined to comment, while attorneys for the plaintiffs did not respond to requests for comment.'"

Are people dumb enough not to be using Amazon for music? Even then what actually ties you to buying music from iTunes? Hell what ties you to using iTunes to get music on your iPod? I'm doing quite well without it on my Linux machine.

Only iTunes can place rights restricted music using the native "Fairplay" DRM on the iPod. That is how it is a monopoly. Everybody else has to use unrestricted formats.

Yeah, wow. That's really stifling competition.

If you want to purchase music from an artist or label that refuses to sell in an unrestricted format, then the iTunes store is your only avenue, short of (illegally?) ripping the music from a CD. Need an example? Try buying a Beatles MP3 on Amazon. It's all cover bands.

Ripping from a CD is not illegal in any way shape or form if you own the CD and rip it for your own use. Apple has supported this method for a LONG time.
iTunes isn't a monopoly.
1) You can get music off CD's and rip it
2) You can get Mp3's off Amazon
3) You can put music from either source (or any other compatible, i.e. non-DRM'd MP3, AAC, WAV etc.) on your iPod
4) You can put non-DRM'd iTunes music on other devices
5) The only reason music on iTunes was ever/is now DRM'd is because the labels demand it, Steve Jobs has been very vocal about non-DRM'd music being the right choice.

Can a user download DRMed music from a company that isn't Apple and put it on their ipod? I don't even know why people are bothering to argue this point - Apple blatantly does have a monopoly on being able to produce FairPlay compatible files for iPods. The real question is whether the courts will decide that this monopoly, and Apple's behaviour in blocking RealPlayer's FairPlay converter, is enough to invoke antitrust law.

Yes, but there is no DRM on any music on the iTunes Store any more, and it's been that way for some time. Fairplay was never designed to be something that would spread - Apple had it out of necessity, but didn't want it to become a de facto standard.

Even when they were selling music with Fairplay DRM they included a feature in iTunes to strip it off (burn to audio CD) if you wanted it (although this meant quality loss if you then re-encoded it). The fiarplay converter isn't strictly needed, if you have any old files left over that have DRM - Apple has two methods to remove that DRM, one of which has always been there (burn audio CD), the other offered at the time they swapped to non-DRM files (a $0.20 per-track upgrade to download the new files).

But since they removed all the DRM, it is no longer an issue - the lawsuit seems to be about Fairplay, which hasn't been in use for some time, for this exact reason. They never wanted DRM in the first place, but had no choice due to the content owners demanding it. They removed it as soon as possible and made it extremely weak and trivial to defeat *within their own program* from the outset, strongly encouraging that you did so when you purchased music back then.

So, I had to really cut down that quote to get it to fit in my sig. Here is the full quote.

There are those who confidently claim that making a copy of music on your hard drive is an act of space shifting protected by the fair use privilege. I'm sure that some people engage in such space shifting, for example by copying music files from lawfully purchased CDs onto their computer hard drives. But anybody why thinks that that is fair use is going out on a limb... I am not saying that it is frivolous to argue that space shifting is fair use. I am not saying that I would be shocked if some court were to conclude that it is fair use. But I don't happen to believe that it is, and I do happen to believe that anyone who makes such a a copy on a hard drive without the consent of the copyright owner is probably engaging in copyright infringement.

The citation is David O. Carson (former General Counsel for the US Copyright Office), "Making the Making Available Right Available", 33 Colum. J. L. & Arts. 135, 138.

That is pretty stupid. Why would I believe this douchebag instead of using common sense, and basic concepts such as first sale? "Space shifting" was first explored with tape-recorders and was deemed legal.

I put illegal? because the record companies assert that it is, many others assert that it isn't, and I haven't seen a case that attempt to prosecute over it. American law is convoluted and easily twisted. Just because you and I believe it is legal doesn't mean we can't be successfully sued for it by corporations with expensive lawyers.

That's not how the word "monopoly" works. If iTunes was the only place to buy music, it could be a monopoly. Just because some artists are exclusive to one store does not make that store a monopoly.

Actually you should have looked up the word monopoly in a dictionary before commenting on it. From Wikipedia

In economics, a monopoly [removed the phonetic stuff because/. wont render it] exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it

It does not say 100%, it says "sufficient control". Apple has this in the digital music distribution market as it can, much like MS in the OS market dictate how other people can sell their products.

Now being a monopoly is not illegal, abusing your monopoly is, Apple's been skirting this for a long time but staying 1 step ahead of an actual investigation unti

So a band you care about has an exclusive agreement? BTW there's nothing illegal about ripping your CDs and you can certainly buy those on Amazon. maybe you should boycott The Beatles for signing a digital downloads only agreement with the #1 music store in the world.

How is Amazon's inability to secure The Beatles proof that iTunes has a monopoly? Hell a year ago iTunes didn't have The Beatles either where I find it hard to believe Apple Records suddenly went "Now that iTunes is a monopoly on the download music market, we will jump in!"

On the other hand, Apple Records has a history of shrewdly protect their rights on The Beatles and has rejected many deals as along the way where it appears that Apple Computer Inc kept negotiating till they got a deal Apple Records agreed too. Added to this nothing is stopping Amazon from making similar concessions where it is only up to Amazon leaders to decide if The Beatles library is worth suspected cost.

So Apple is a monopoly based on the actions of another (the artist) party? That doesn't make sense to me. At that point your beef is with the artist, not Apple. It is not Apple's responsibility to make the music available.

Only iTunes can place rights restricted music using the native "Fairplay" DRM on the iPod. That is how it is a monopoly. Everybody else has to use unrestricted formats.

During the time in question, there were multiple DRM restricted music stores. Apple is the sole source of FairPlay DRM, but that's not a monopoly. That's having control over one's own product, which is generally how things are expected to work.

Leveraging a monopoly in one market (MP3 players) to gain a monopoly in another (online music stores) is a violation of antitrust law. The problem no longer exists, so damages will be limited, but if Real want to continue to pursue this based on the situation 5 years ago, then that is between them and the lawyers on both sides, who will likely be the only winners here.

At issue is a piece of software called Fairplay that allowed only music bought on iTunes to be played on the iPod, according to the complaint.

One competitor, RealNetworks Inc, responded in 2004 by introducing a new technology that would allow customers to play music downloaded from its site on their iPods. But Apple quickly announced a software upgrade to iTunes that once more blocked music from RealNetworks, the complaint charges.

Lloyd said the deposition of Jobs would be limited to questions about the back-and-forth with RealNetworks in 2004.

It's not about buying music from iTunes. It's about Apple killing music from a competing retailer on the iPod.

That's just Apple refusing to support a DRM scheme other than their own, especially one that essentially broke Apple's DRM.

Unencumbered media would still have loaded onto an iPod just fine. If Real weren't so incompetent, they would've pioneered DRM-free music sales, and might have saved themselves from becoming irrelevant.

At the time non of the major labels would have accepted non-DRM sales. Many of the smaller labels would also have required DRM. The non-DRM movement started only recently. While yes Real could have tried to pioneer non-DRM music, they would have been limited to unknown artists that were just desparate to become known, only to be abandoned by those same artists when they did become known and would start requiring DRM on their music. The time wasn't there yet.

Am I the only one which sees a difference between "not supporting" and "actively working against"?

There's a difference, but it doesn't change anything. Apple is under no obligation to keep from breaking Real's breaking of Apple's DRM. In fact, they are likely under contract to do so.

Apple never did anything to prevent Real from selling music to iPod owners in MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF, or other officially supported formats. They just prevented Real from using Apple's own, proprietary DRM format. This is not illegally anti-competitive. If it is, please be sure to let GeoHot know. I imagine such a fact would be

Please remember when all that was happening Apple was alive and well selling desktop computers, and Linux had a huge share of the server (particularly web server) market and a sliver of the desktop market.

Yet, MS was still nailed for being a monopoly. Reason is you do not have to have 100% of a market, just the lion's share.

And technically, just having a "large market share" doesn't mean you're subject to penalties, either.

You have to *abuse* that large market share to unreasonably restrict competition. If you're simply better at what you do than anybody else, and people overwhelmingly choose your product/service, then there's no basis for an antitrust suit. Once you use your dominant position to harm Gateway's or RealNetworks' business, as Microsoft was found to have done.

Antitrust law is intended to encourage competition by making it painful for the big guys to stomp on the little guys who are competing well; it's not intended to punish someone for succeeding in a *legitimate* competition. It's possible to have a large market share without abusing it, though I'm sure it must be awfully tempting.

Because Apple prevents competition with legal threats. They can't block Linux/Open Source, but they do prevent commercial competition, which is what is illegal. This suit is about the iTunes application, not the music store.

The suit stems largely from the Apple / RealNetworks dispute regarding the Harmony service Real tried to offer, allowing people to buy music from Real, and load it on iPods by re-DRM'ing the track as a "FairPlay-compatible" track. Apple made changes that (deliberately or not) stopped Harmony-purchased tracks from working on an iPod.

I'm not certain that this rises to the level of "antitrust" for several reasons:1) They weren't under any obligation to license their FairPlay technology to other vendors, and in fact VirginMega actually got shot down by a court in 2004 for that very reason;2) It's possible that turning a blind eye to how easily FairPlay was reverse engineered by Real could have put Apple afoul of its agreements with the record labels;3) iPods have *always* allowed (and played) non-DRM'ed MP3/AAC tracks - Real could have sold non-DRM tracks if they wanted to sell for the iPod - eMusic has been doing it for a while now;4) Real could have built their own iPod competitor, and had a run at the market that way; Microsoft's Zune and Sansa's various portable models both did this;

In short, there was enough competition and choice for consumers on the market that Apple's product decision didn't reasonably constitute "monopolistic" behavior.

They could be, if not doing it would be enough to leverage their monopoly on MP3 players to gain an advantage in the digital music market.

They have not been declared to have a "monopoly" on MP3 players. They would first have to be declared a monopoly before we can say that they then used that monopoly to unfairly limit the competition. Alternative hardware exists: Sansa players, Zune, and numerous other iPod work-alikes. Alternative music stores existed: Amazon, eMusic, Zune Marketplace; Any MP3 purch

Are people dumb enough not to be using Amazon for music?..Hell what ties you to using iTunes to get music on your iPod? I'm doing quite well without it on my Linux machine.

Avoiding apple at all costs, my son was gifted a iPod by a family member a few weeks ago. One of the latest 4G devices. Without Jail Breaking the device, there is no way (that I have found) that I can get this to sync to my Ubuntu PC. I have searched forum after forum after forum.

I tried to purchase an Mp3 from amazon, it wanted me to use their default downloader. Which was not compatible with 64 bit linux

So while I don't have to use itunes specifically to use the IPod. . Linux is not an option for it at pr

I only know one person who buys music from iTunes. Everyone else uses other services, rips their own DVDs, or downloads torrents.

Apple is far from having a music monopoly.

But I have always been curious why Apple didn't get sued for getting into the entertainment business. I seem to recall Apple Records of Beatles fame having Apple Computer agree not to get involved in music so that there would be no confusion between the two Apples.

Are people dumb enough not to be using Apple for their OS? Even then what actually ties you to buying an OS from Microsoft? Hell what ties you to using Microsoft to get an OS on your laptop? I'm doing quite well without it on my Apple machine.

Hopefully this will give you a big hint as to the fact you don't understand that it's marketshare that determines monopoly, not amount of competition. There's always been many many competitors to Windows, yet Microsoft had a monopoly because

The whole apple music thing has always confused me. Why didn't they go with something already existing? This would make sense, but we know Apple is out to make dollars. By whatever means possible of course.

If it's about Fairplay there's one problem: Apple's has removed Fairplay DRM for all iTunes audio for over 3 years now (5 years for EMI music). And there's never been anything that keeps any iPods (any version) from playing standard MP3's that were bought from other sources.

People interested in this news item might be interested in this relatively brief overview (considering lawyers' tendency to logorrhea) of antitrust and IP rights bundling put out by the US government. Enjoy! [justice.gov]

Because MS abuses its monopolistic status. You can't migrate over other operating system easily, even if you can. There're still too many incompatibilities. For almost every implementation of technology now there's a classification of Unix-based couple of OS and Windows ones (which was actually Unix based at the beginning). MS diverged its operating system too much and never released any reliable specs for considerably long time to cause vendor lock-in. Not any other implementation could ever existed apart

How on earth was Windows "UNIX" based? Home windows (the line beginning with 1.0) certainly wasn't, and if anything NT was OS/2 based. If you are referring to the POSIX subsystem... you can still install the UNIX Subsystem in Windows 7...
And you damn well can migrate to another OS easily, so long as your data is readible in both systems. Which largely is going to depend on software, but it's not exactly surprising if some niche software you depend on isn't avaliable. Especially if you're dealing with a cl

You certainly make a good point about how there are a lot of devices that can / could handle general computing tasks that are not "PCs" (such as tablets and phones) and that those generally don't run Windows. However, today, most of those devices are still considered secondary devices - and many of them require a PC or Mac in order to get their updates. This will change, and not all of them require it. But - right now - most of them are ancillary devices. For example, most updates for the iPhone require it be tethered to a PC / Mac in order to get them. In the Android world, many phones do OTA updates (like my Motorola Droid), but my Wife's HTC Aria just got an update to 2.2.2 and it had to be applied tethered to a PC (not a Mac) and was a wipe and load. I do believe that it won't be too long before most of these devices dispense with that tethered connection. Today though I have to consider a lot of them as secondary devices - and unlike Steve Jobs I can't call them "post PC devices" when they still require a PC / Mac in order to get updates.

Then you are free to use Amazon's service (and I guess there may be others).

I'm not really sure how they have a monopoly, when it's dead simple to opt for Amazon, instead. I use iTunes as my player and it's the most convenient podcast client I've found (because I listen to a lot of them), but I've never bought a single song on iTunes. I save that for Amazon. Better quality. Better prices. Re-downloadable. No DRM.

They may have some shitty business practices, when it comes to the operation of their app stores

Exactly, that bastard Steve forced the record companies to accept his tyrannical 99 cent pricing policy and allow me to burn purchased songs to CD's where they can be ripped back to MP3 free of the restrictions! We must end his monopoly on rights restricted downloadable music for the iPod! Other companies MUST be free to sell us restricted license music & video for our iPods!
Unite!

Also, while I'm no iTunes expert, I'm pretty sure that you can convert your Apple music to mp3s. My wife does it somehow.

Only because Apple was able to convince the RIAA to drop the DRM restrictions... Apple was certainly not alone in that, but they did fight the good fight for us in terms of removing DRM on music, even though the associated lock-in was working in their favor to keep people using iTunes/iPod. Unfortunately I see no pressure to do the same with TV/Movies they sell through iTunes, as much as I would like to buy TV a la carte and watch it on my Linux media center. (Hacked AirPlay developments not withstanding)

Exactly, that bastard Steve forced the record companies to accept his tyrannical 99 cent pricing policy and allow me to burn purchased songs to CD's where they can be ripped back to MP3 free of the restrictions

Points which are irrelevant to the antitrust case in question. Back in 2004, RealPlayer could be used to transfer FairPlay compatible music to the ipod. Apple said "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws." After that, Apple changed the firmware to break the RealPlayer generated files.

If the Zune had reached 74% market share, and Apple had responded by adding the capability to download itunes music to the Zune, and Microsoft then broke that and blocked Apple from the market, you would be outraged. This is no different.

Microsoft developed an OS which it sold to its consumers, who were primarily OEMs. This OS had features, one of which was "It works with almost all the software your customers will see for sale in the brick and mortar software shop down the street, so you can market your hardware to people who may not be familiar with computers." In order to ensure this feature, it made contracts with its OEMs, who were free to accept, decline, or negotiate parts of this deal. The deal exchanged discounts on the cost Micros

Want to develop software that the iPhone already provides? Good luck. Your own browser version? It's possible, but it'll be slow because only Safari can be fast, and that's how Jobs wants it. Your own email client? Maybe, maybe not. Their rules for letting apps competing with stock applications into the App store aren't really that clear, regardless of what their criteria actually says.

He was referencing the fact that not only does it bundle its own software but if you develop software that functionally duplicates on of their apps you likely can't even distribute that (according to the dev agreement). MS can't even bundle its own software on its product even though it gives you absolute freedom to install whatever other software you want.

So where apple can quite happily bundle safari with iOS and tell you what you can and cannot install MS can't bundle IE with Windows even though they impose no restrictions on what you can and can't install.

Uh, yeah, this argument doesn't really carry any water until you set your sights on Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.

Well it actually does, it's just that it applies equally to them as well. There's no rule that says you have to have a go at Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft before you're allowed to have a go at Apple.

No, it just reeks of bias and damages your appearance of objectivity.

Rubbish, if you have a problem with one company you don't have to go after every other company that could possibly have the same issue for the original argument to be justified, nor does that have any impact on your objectivity. Sure the same argument applies to many other companies, but the fact that he didn't seek out every other company that it could potentially apply to (and neither did you) doesn't damage his original argument or objectivity in the slightest.

OK, because everyone seems to forget this, every time the 'monopoly' work is brought up.

It is not illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to abuse a monopoly.

They are not being sued because everyone uses them, they're being sued because they used their monopoly status to limit competition.

Apple never had a monopoly in music players or music downloads. They lead both of those markets, but never abused that status in any legally reasonable sense. Apple wasn't blocking Real from selling music. In fact, they weren't even blocking Real from selling music compatible with the iPod. They have no obligation whatsoever to allow third party music on the iPod.

Monopoly in economic terms does not mean 100% of the market, it means enough market share to "determine significantly on which terms" others can access that market.

MS has never had 100% of the OS market, but for a long time MS has had enough to prevent others from accessing it. By the same token, Apple has been using it's influence to make non-Apple MP3 players disappear from store shelves. To fix prices at which other stores can sell MP3's and prevent other stores from operating in certai

You seem to be under the illusion that iTunes is the only software that can write to the iPod, and confusing the time where Apple changed their protocols to more rigorously enforce checking of the USB vendor ID after a different company was spoofing Apple's ID (against the terms of their contract with the USB IF) in order to make their device appear to be an iPod so they could get around having to write any sync software (or licence a third party thing like The Missing Sync) for use with iTunes.

Rejoice: a new oxymoron is born.
(thin line - accidentally cross it because it takes no time, but very well defined. Fuzzy line - is non-trivial to cross but, being fuzzy, there is no way to tell the exact moment one actually crossed it) .